


fire walk with me

by shepherd



Category: Rooster Teeth/Achievement Hunter RPF
Genre: Angst, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Nightmares, twin peaks references aww yiss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-09-08
Updated: 2013-09-08
Packaged: 2017-12-26 00:09:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,509
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/959248
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shepherd/pseuds/shepherd
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Writing practice for prompt ‘nightmare’. Michael has a dream that Gavin is leaving him- and he wakes up to find Gavin isn’t in bed. Angst and other not so fun times with a somewhat happy ending. Warning for language, panic attacks and practice for a kind of trippy dream sequence style.</p>
            </blockquote>





	fire walk with me

**Author's Note:**

> Written a while ago on my tumblr (15acresofbrokenglass), just posting now.

Michael’s heart was made of paper, and it’s edges curled and blackened as it burned. It crumbled slowly into delicate gray ash as the fire overwhelmed him, licking at his skin.

He wasn’t really on fire, but he wouldn’t have known that from he agonizing sensations that he felt. He shuddered at the white hot sensations of pain. Everything burns. Everything. The tears burned at his watering eyes. The soft skin of his palms flared with stinging pain as he dug his nails in deep, leaving pink and red and white crescents like burns cut into him. His throat blazed with his grief, and he struggled to swallow around the lump of thick despair that had clumped together.

He didn’t understand. It was all too much, all of it, all at once.

Why was there so much fire? Why was this happening to him?  _Why are you leaving me?_

“Gavin.” He almost gagged. “Please.” The fire rose inside him, and his blood was molten lava, coursing through his veins. His traitor heart only seemed to pump it faster around his hapless body as it crumbled, signing it’s own death warrant.

Nothing made sense. Everything was surreal and twisted, deformed and terrifying. Michael tried his hardest to understand, tried to hardest to be rational, but he couldn’t apply logic here. It simply couldn’t be done.

He heard Gavin sigh, not a sound of contentment or happiness like it usually was. It was a sound of exhaustion and irritation. Michael listened to his footfalls, his bare feet padding on the hardwood floor of their apartment. “That isn’t going to work, Michael.” His voice was cold and distant, not full of his usual bubbly warmth. “Not anymore.”

Michael sat on the edge of his- no, their- bed. He had been standing, once upon a time, but he feared he would lose his balance and he collapsed onto the bed. His head had spun dangerously, and he couldn’t keep track of the room. All he saw was Gavin. All that mattered was Gavin. He looked up, and his lover was standing in the doorway, gazing at him with those once eager eyes. He was still missing his shoes, having pulled on socks at some point- Michael wondered if he was zoning in and out, missing time, but he shoved the thoughts away, deeming them irrelevant because damnit he was losing Gavin- but otherwise he was ready to go. He had his jacket shrugged on, and an overnight bag was slung over his shoulders.

“I’ll be back tomorrow afternoon for the rest of my stuff.” Gavin brushed a lock of his dark hair out of his face thoughtlessly, uncaringly. “I don’t think you should be here then.”

Michael never actively thought about Gavin leaving him- he certainly wasn’t the perfect partner, with all his pent up rage and the lack of a filter between his brain and his mouth, but Gavin was hardly flawless- but he thought if a lover, any lover was going to leave him Michael would have been a lot more frantic. He would have followed them, demanding answers and reasons, pleading with them not go. He wouldn’t have let them walk away, not from him, not without a damn good reason.

But with Gavin, he only begged with him to tell him why. He didn’t storm across the apartment, pacing furiously, spitting venomous words that he probably didn’t even mean. If he wanted to walk out on him, if it would have made him happy that would be fine. He would have cheated, lied, killed, bled, done absolutely anything to see Gavin’s flawed and yet flawless smile. He just wanted to understand why. _Why are you leaving me?_

God, why was there so much fire?

“Gavin.” He tried again. He forced himself to stand despite the fact the room swum around him wildly. His legs almost buckled, and his vision darkened, waxing and waning. Everything was still burning, and the blood that ran through his body roared like growing flame in his ears. “Don’t do this to me.” His voice wavered dangerously. “Please.”

Gavin stared at him, incredulously. He looked at him like he was something sickening and pathetic, an insect that he planned to crush underneath his shoe. He was the only thing the fire never touched. It danced around him instead, flickering and waving, kissing his feet. “Michael.” He shook his head, but Michael pushed that all away. He pushed away everything he didn’t like, everything that pointed to the fact Gavin didn’t love him anymore and he clung to the beautiful things- the way Gavin used to say his name, full of love and adoration. “This is stupid. This needs to end.”

“No, it doesn’t.” He argued back, his voice loud. The neighbours were probably eavesdropping on every word they said, silently listening to the devastation as the foundations of their relationship crumbled into dust, but Michael didn’t care. “Whatever’s wrong, whatever I’ve done, I can fix it.” He tried to surge forward, intending to snatch at his lover and never let him go. But his legs were heavy suddenly, inexplicably, and he found that he could not move. It was as if concrete weights had been attached to his feet, or if hands had grabbed hold of his ankles. Even the laws of physics were against him. Michael had no chance of winning. But he still fought on, tooth and nail.

“Michael,” Gavin murmured again, and the man ignored the way it sounds so tired, so final. “Michael.”

The fire crackled in his ears.

“I thought you were my boy, Gavin.” He burst out, his voice pitched higher than usual and his tone hysterical. Pressure built in his temples and it was gradually becoming too much for him to handle. The tears dribbled ungracefully down his cheeks. He felt like there was a hand clawing at his brain, scratching at it. His heart pounded brutally, again and again and again, relentless inside his ribcage. He wished it would stop. “I thought you were mine.”

He wasn’t sure what response he expected. It wasn’t playing out like a typical drama on the television, the ones he and Gavin both trashed in happier days- it was too raw for that, too in the moment. They weren’t playing by a script. He thought maybe Gavin would shake his head and sadly say ‘not anymore’ or maybe he would even change his mind about leaving, although he understood how selfish and naïve that line of thought was.

He never expected an ugly scowl to cross his lover’s face, and his lips to curl up in a soundless snarl. The fire intensified, growing taller, the heat scorching. “I was never your boy, Michael.” Gavin sneered. “I was never yours.”

The cruel words slammed into him with the weight and the speed of a freight train, and he was sent reeling. His gradually steadying feet failed him, and he flopped back onto the bed as if in defeat. His joints felt like they were stiff with rust, parts of an old, irrelevant, defunct machine. He couldn’t manage words. His jaw unhinged, but nothing emerged.

Gavin sighed once more, a heavy sound, as if he carried the weight of the world on his slim shoulders. Michael heard fingers drumming against the doorway, an impatient little rhythm. Then, he realised Gavin was approaching him.

He wore vivid green socks, the ones with little lambs all over them. Griffon had brought them for him mockingly a Christmas- or was it two?- ago, and the memory of their little patchwork family laughing and drinking together stung. The sheer ridiculousness of them scarred him, too- he was never going to see those fucking stupid socks again, he was never going to hear Gavin coo over them in that stupid voice. He was never going to hear or see Gavin again if he let him walk out.

He hung his head as the man approached, silently, like a wraith. The floorboards didn’t even creak, as if he was weightless. Michael stared down at those cartoonish socks when Gavin halted in front of him.

Gavin bent down, kneeling before him. Michael found that ironic, the god bowing before the broken believer, but he couldn’t force out the bitter laughter. His long fingers reached out to him and ghosted a trail along his jaw line, and Michael recoiled, flinching away from the light touch. He hadn’t meant to. He intended to grab his hand and press his cheek into the palm of his hand imploring. He would have never let go. But Gavin’s fingers were bitingly cold, like stalactites, and his skin was firm and tight, like that of a corpse. Michael’s skin crawled as Gavin’s hard nails scarped across the pliant and heated flesh of his cheek. The contrast between the living ice and the dancing fire made him hiss in pain, but he never pulled away.

“We are done.” Gavin informed him, staring directly into his eyes. Gavin’s lips looked freezing cold now, the colour of frozen raspberries. His eyes were light, a pale green, the colour of well worn dollar bills. His skin was the colour of snow, even as the ruby red fire licked at him. “I’m leaving. And I’m not coming back.”

 _Gavin,_ he tried to say. _Gavin._ The word was a prayer, a mantra, the only thing that kept him even remotely sane. But judging by everything he was experiencing, the deterioration of his world, it wasn’t working anymore. He choked out a useless word, intending it to be the name of his lover, the one who meant everything to him, but it’s nonsense. It was a word in a long dead tongue that meant nothing to either of them.

He didn’t see indifference in Gavin’s eyes, like he thought he would. He saw nothing instead. He was silent, ungrudging as Michael struggled to speak. Then he let his hand drop, still ghosting Michael’s skin, the nails still scratching. Gavin grasped his jaw firmly, in between a forefinger and thumb, and the castrating temperatures fought a long and vicious civil war. This war was waged on the battle field of Michael’s skin, and he howled in a mixture of agony and despair. He lashed out, trying to get away from the pain, his legs kicking as he screamed. Gavin let him go, and Michael fell sideways off of the bed, collapsing to the floor, a wretched mess.

Gavin eyed him, his expression blank. His eyes were dead, the sparkle that made them gleam long gone. He was a shell of who he used to be, and Michael was no longer sure if he was crying because he was losing his lover, or the world had lost Gavin.

Gavin ducked down, even as Michael screamed for him to stop, and placed a hand over his heart. Even through the fabric of his shirt, he felt the bite of cold meet the thunderous fire of his heart.

When Michael finally jerked awake, he didn’t shriek, and for that, he was thankful.

It was dark, impossibly and crushingly so, and Michael could barely see a thing. He gasped for breath, and he found that his throat was sore and his lips were dry and chapped. He grasped for his throat, feeling like he was going to choke and retch on his fear, and his hand slipped on the sweat that coated his skin. He felt his hair, plastered to his warm face, and the dampness of the sheets that tangled around his legs and waist. He recalled the fire, and panicked, running his hands across his face, his arms, his legs. He expected to find numbness, or smooth or puckered skin, remnants of burns seared into his flesh. He found nothing. His hands skimmed over his own warm and perfectly normal skin, and he let himself breathe a sigh of relief.

The cool air of the night felt good, but odd on his overheated body.

He felt like a wreck despite everything, a man lost at sea. The waves had battered at him and he had long since lost his sense of direction. He took in the room around him, somewhat desperate, and as his eyes slowly adjusted he could make out the faint lines of his bedroom, the shapes of his television and the wardrobe. The room was littered with familiar little things, personal objects that gradually brought him down from the heights of hysteria. The picture frame on the table across the room was the most helpful- it was of Gavin and Ray, pressed close, pulling ridiculous and monstrous faces. Michael couldn’t help but smile at the sight. The memories it sparked back to life were reassuring- but nothing was more comforting than the sight of Gavin himself.

He pawed around to his left, searching for the comforting warmth of his hopefully still slumbering lover- and his hand was greeted with nothing, only the ice of cold bed sheets.

His heart switched residence from his chest to his throat, and he twisted to his side, flopping like a fish on land. The other side of the bed was empty. Gavin was missing. Dread filled him to the brim, and the breath caught in his throat.

A broken sob tore free of his throat, and his body seized up. The room seemed to constrict, shrinking down into practically nothing. There was no sign of Gavin, none at all. He wasn’t standing on the other side of the room. The adjacent bathroom was visibly empty. His personal effects- his phone, his ipod, his keys- were missing from the bedside cabinet. Michael wondered, if he were to look inside the wardrobe, would his clothes still be there?

His breath quickened, the grief raw and intense, stronger than anything Michael had ever felt before. He had known pain and suffering, who hadn’t, but this was new. It was overpowering. Usually he just got mad- he let the rage take over and he’d smash a plate, punch a wall, maybe a person. But this wasn’t anger, this was sorrow, plain and simple.

He wanted nothing more than to have Gavin back. The memories of the dream where still strong, and they had felt so real. He wanted to reach out and hold him tight, feel his dark locks in his hands, feel the delicate warm of his skin. He just _wanted._

But he couldn’t have him.

_He was gone, and he was never coming back._

This time, Michael did howl, a banshee’s wail, a wild animal shrieking in agony and fear. The fire was back, building again, and his heartbeat was a crescendo in his ears. He felt like cigarettes were being put out against his skin, matches getting struck against the soles of his feet. He burnt, and he let the world know about it.

x-x-x-x-x

Gavin waited, his eyes narrowed, his shoulders hunched and his body tensed.

The metal contraption sat there on his counter, quite innocently, but it ticked rather ominously. He didn’t like it. He didn’t trust it, and he couldn’t believe so many people in the world did. Time trickled by, like water dripping from a tap, slow and heavy. The palpable tension in the room built gradually, thickening and laying a heavy weight on Gavin’s shoulders. His eyes narrowed into slits, and although he was very sure he was making a huge mistake, he drew closer.

The contraption ticked on.

He hummed curiously, wondering if there was something wrong- then suddenly, there was a noise like meshed metal slamming together and a loud ‘pop’. Gavin jumped in alarm, caught off guard. He sprung backwards, flailing a little- but of course he would deny everything if he was asked- and the toaster spat bread at him.

His heart thumped dangerously, feeling quite like it was going to burst out of his chest and escape through the kitchen window. It didn’t, and Gavin was glad. He didn’t fancy explaining to Michael why there was a gaping hole in his chest with no heart inside and a broken window. Of course, he would be dead because he had no heart, but Gavin deemed all that nonsense irrelevant.

He plucked the toast out, muttering little ‘ow’s!’ under his breath as the hot bread scalded his fingers, and he half threw the slices onto the plate that waited on the counter. He has the butter on the knife ready, and a empty stomach waiting for a midnight snack. Or to be exact, a three thirty-two AM snack.

He scraped his knife inside the butter container and was about to spread it over the bread when he heard a terrible scream coming from the bedroom.

He didn’t purposely think. The only thought that occurred to him was completely involuntary, and it was only a single word- Michael. He had heard Michael scream multiple times before, in a variety of ways- rage, pleasure, aggravation- but never like that. Never with such fear.

The knife fell from his fingers and bounced off the kitchen counter, cluttering onto the tiled floor. He didn’t care. He turned and he ran full pelt across the kitchen, through the living room and down the hall. He burst in the ajar bedroom door, half expecting to meet a blood covered serial killer halfway there. The apartment was seemingly empty and dark, everything seemingly perfectly normal.

He almost lost his footing in the bedroom, almost crashing to the hard wooden floor, but his feet steadied and he slid to a stop. The first thing he noticed was that the room was stifling hot, like the inside of Mount Doom. The sudden change in temperature hit him like whiplash. His eyes scanned the room, picking out everything in a matter of seconds- and they halted when he saw Michael’s form on the bed. He had kicked the duvets off, and they lay knotted, abandoned on the floor. He had curled up in the direct centre of the bed, not quite in the foetal position but close, as if he was trying to ward off danger by making himself a smaller, less threatening target.

The sounds he made physically hurt Gavin- the piercing scream had tapered off into low whimpers and whines, and he swore he could hear sobs. He saw that Michael’s fingers had knotted in the mattress cover, and the skin of his knuckles was as white as freshly fallen snow.

Gavin’s heart tightened, that odd surge of emotion seeping through his entire body, and he moved across the room to slide himself over the double bed and pull Michael into a comforting embrace.

“I’m sorry.” He muttered, his voice low and soothing as his partner quivered in his arms, soft and pained noises escaping him now and again. “I should have heard you if you had a nightmare, I should have woken you up.” He smoothed back the sweat damp auburn curls. “I should have been there.”

Michael sucked in a breath, and Gavin felt him loosen, his muscles no longer tense and his joints no longer locked. His fingers unfroze, and they curled around his forearm, gripping him so tight he was almost positive he would have bruises the next morning. He heard a muffled groan of what could have been his name, and his head turned towards him. His eyes were squeezed shut to almost a painful degree, and his cheeks were tracked with tears. His face was a crimson hue. Gavin hushed him, and pressed a dry kiss to the centre of his forehead, the only bare skin he could reach. He tasted the bitter tang of sweat later, when he licked his dry lips.

“I was only gone for ten minutes.” He tried to joke weakly, but Michael gives him no response, as if he went unheard. He didn’t try to repeat himself. He just shifted on the duvet- a spark of pain flaring in his soul and body alike when Michael’s fingers clamped down as if trying to prevent him from leaving- and spread his legs, pulling his lover closer to him. Michael planted his face into Gavin’s abdomen, and his elbows ended up pressing rather uncomfortabley into his thigh, but he made no complaint.

Gavin stroked his cheek carefully with a thumb, and rocked him to sleep like child. He prayed whatever nightmare that plagued him wouldn’t return, and he had a sleepless night as he hushed every low whimper and kissed away each frown.

When the sun came up with the sound of birds trilling, Michael blinked awake, and Gavin did have purple bruises the shape of Michael’s fingertips along his forearm. Michael kissed them softly, wordlessly, and Gavin kissed him in return, and the dream was discussed over breakfast. Gavin listened intently, making no interruptions or grand declarations of _‘I would never do that’_. Instead, he waited until Michael had clearly finished- then he dropped his spoon into his bowl of cereal and leant over to kiss his fears away.

The nightmare never returned, and Gavin never walked away.


End file.
